Quote Originally Posted by Rhyfhylwyr View Post
The relationship people have with God is not that of a parent to a child, it is unique. All it means is there is someone out there that is stronger and smarter than you, unless you're the strongest and smartest person in the world that's going to be true anyway.



Both the OT and NT God raise up the poor, promote justice and some sense of equality etc. At the same time they both destroy empires, punish peoples with terrible afflictions, and carry out (or at least promise) mass killings. The different focus in the NT is because God has come down in the form of man to show how people should live humbly and without sin before God, and ultimately to die for theirs sins.



That might make sense if the NT was written and compiled in fairly modern times. As things stand, that was done at a time of mass violence and oppression, when Judea was at its most nationalistic, racist and generally intolerant. The NT was particularly atypical of its time, and certainly doesn't fit into a historical pattern of developing concepts of morality.
Interesting view.

I don't know if I agree that it doesn't fit in the historical pattern though. The religion spread in the Roman Empire, that around this time had huge problems with slaves and violence. Spartacus caused mayhem just one or two generations before Jesus spread his message, as an example.

Because it WAS a time of mass violence and oppression, as you mention, there are bound to be a force in society that want to end it. And as always, the more force one side of the equation have, generally a equally strong diametrically opposite force will arise.

This in history is at least in Swedish terms known as the historical whiplash effect.

IE. Pretty much all of the world before WW2 were into racial thinking and ranking. After world war 2 you can barely say that negroes are the best runners without having a wall of political correctness hitting you.

So shall we look at the world in the 30's - 40's and say that it had horrible racial views, or should we look at it and say that it was the birth of a world wide anti-racism project?